1. Field of the Invention
This application relates to testing of integrated circuits and more particularly to testing storage arrays in integrated circuits.
2. Description of the Related Art
Integrated circuits such as microprocessors (such as, but not limited to, central processing units and graphics processing units) typically contain multiple storage arrays. For modern microprocessors, the storage arrays may range from large instruction and data caches to small register files. Part of the process of manufacturing such integrated circuits involves testing the arrays and determining if any of the arrays have failures. The tests typically involve writing data to the memory and reading back the data to determine if the write was successful. Various patterns may be written to the arrays. Some data patterns may be better at uncovering certain failures depending upon the particular memory technology.
Once the tests have been completed, the results need to be stored in order to be utilized in failure analysis and possible repair of the failed arrays. In the past, failure information and repair data collected during test have been stored in the array under test itself. For integrated circuits with hundreds of arrays, that may result in the need to read hundreds of different arrays to determine whether there is a need to fix the array being read and the failure information necessary to fix the array.